Controversial free-domains company Freenom has lost its ICANN accreditation, signalling the end of its life as a gTLD registrar.
Org said that as of November 25, Freenom (aka OpenTLD) will no longer be able to sell or renew any domains.
The termination follows the company’s failure to resolve or respond to three separate breach notices, covering dozens of infractions, that Compliance sent between September and October.
Real damage to registrants was caused — many could not rescue their expired domains or transfer names to another registrar.
The company has 16,521 gTLD domains under management at the end of July, according to the most-recent registry transaction reports. They will now be moved to a more-reliable registrar under ICANN’s De-Accredited Registrar Transition Procedure.
Freenom may have been a small fish in the gTLD space, but it gave away tens of millions of free domains in five ccTLDs it controlled, mostly to spammers and other ne’er-do-wells.
It was recently reported that it has lost or is losing its deals with these ccTLDs, notably .tk, after their governments became aghast at how badly they were being abused.
The post ICANN cans Freenom first appeared on Domain Incite.
